Sarah Champion – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Champion on 2014-03-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he has taken to ensure that the probation contracts in England and Wales are let without risk to the public or waste of public money.

Jeremy Wright

Under our reforms the market will be opened up to a diverse range of new rehabilitation providers, so that we get the best out of the public, voluntary and private sectors, at the local as well as national level. Protecting the public must remain our top priority,and the new National Probation Service will manage all offenders who pose a high risk of harm to the public or have committed the most serious offences. The Secretary of State will continue to issue national standards for the management of offenders, and the Government will place contractual requirements on Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) to ensure that the risk of harm posed by offenders is effectively managed. Providers bidding to run CRCs will need to demonstrate in their bids how they would deliver high quality rehabilitative support to offenders, and they will be held to account to deliver these services in their contracts. Bidders will also need to demonstrate how they will maintain a workforce with appropriate levels of competence and training to deliver these services.

Our proposals will be affordable within the context of the MoJ commitment to deliver annual savings of over £2 billion by 2014/15. We plan to make efficiency savings through the use of competition, the introduction of private and voluntary sector providers, and by consolidating back-office functions within the public sector. Releasing these efficiency savings will enable us to invest in rehabilitation and extend provision to support supervision to a wider group of offenders.